


discounted

by neonsign



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Awkward Flirting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 05:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7744333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonsign/pseuds/neonsign
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arisato held out a small piece of paper. It was a coupon. Two-for-one ramen at Hagakure, it said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	discounted

**Author's Note:**

> for shinjiro's birthday!! toot toot

All the times Aki had come chasing after Shinjiro, trying to get him to fight again, he’d never said anything about what kind of person was leading SEES. To be able to rein Aki in, to earn Mitsuru’s trust and respect – the guy had to be impressive. A couple times Shinjiro had caught himself wondering about it, but whatever he had imagined him to be, the reality was that Arisato wasn’t.

There was no doubt Arisato was impressive on the battlefield – a one man army, really – but once they were off it, you just couldn’t get a read on the guy. Aki said that was part of why he was made leader, but when your enemies were mindless monsters, unpredictability didn’t really matter.

Arisato was just weird, plain and simple. A good leader, sure, but a bit of an airhead.

Like the day after Shinjiro joined. Arisato stood in front of his seat on the couch. Neither of their attentions could be on anything but each other. At the same time, Arisato seemed to be trying to take as little of it as possible. Shyly demanding.

At first he’d been in the dining room, sitting at the table and doing literally nothing. No book, no video game. Just sitting there and looking down at his lap. Everyone else was either out or in their rooms; there was only the two of them. A couple times, Arisato walked into the lounge and sat on the arm of the couch, watching TV but saying nothing, then headed back into the dining room. All while Shinjiro did him the favour of pretending not to notice.

But then he tried blocking the TV.

Arisato held out a small piece of paper. It was a coupon. Two-for-one ramen at Hagakure, it said.

For a long, awkward silence, the two of them looked at each other. At least, Shinjiro looked at him; Arisato kept staring at the floor. Then he turned away with a face like he was eating dirt.

“Just thought you’d want it,” was all he said, sounding just as pissed off as he looked.

While Shinjiro was still trying to think of something to say, Arisato’s footsteps retreated up the stairs. He turned the coupon over, running his thumb over the glossy paper.

There was no way he looked that hard up for cash. Sure, his clothes were from a second-hand store but they weren’t really in bad shape. And if it was the hair, then that guy had no right to say anything at all.

But whatever.

Shinjiro pocketed the coupon and went back to the TV, flipping to the cooking channel now that he was finally alone. It was better that way, with just surface kindness.

At least it would be, if it had ended there.

Not even two days later, the same scene was happening again. Arisato was avoiding Shinjiro’s eyes as he handed him a two-for-one coupon.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Nothing,” Arisato said quickly. “I mean… use it. Did – did you use the other one?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Oh. Alone?”

“I took Aki.”

Shinjiro frowned as something passed over Arisato’s face; just the slightest flicker of his eyes to the side. He looked down at the coupon in his hand and things started making sense, in a roundabout and irritating way.

Being friends with Mitsuru, Shinjiro had grown used to acts of charity (and turning them down), but this felt less like having his best interests at heart and more like it was being done out of obligation. Like it was his duty as a leader to do the bare minimum and reach out. Aki or Mitsuru must’ve said something about being nice and welcoming Shinjiro into their ranks; you didn’t give someone a mailed advertisement if you at all cared. It was like digging through your pocket and handing over lint and a pen lid.

Shinjiro held up the coupon. “Did you wanna come this time?”

“Yeah,” came out immediately. Arisato scratched his nose and turned his head. “I mean… if you want.”

“Alright…”

It was awful. Not the food – the food was good – but the atmosphere and the lack of any kind of conversation. The entire time barely more than five words passed between them. It was worse than Arisato flitting between the living and dining rooms.

Just for the noise, Shinjiro tried bringing up the topic of their team, the only thing they had in common. They needed to take care of themselves and as leader, it was Arisato’s responsibility to make sure that’s what they were doing.

“Yeah,” Arisato said between bites, “they’re fine.”

Shinjiro waited for more but nothing came. Arisato was leaning so far over his bowl, it was a miracle his hair wasn’t getting in his food – not that he wasn’t having issues with it. At one point he made a tiny annoyed noise and tucked his hair behind his ear, which was – his hair was so thick it made his ear stick out and that was really kind of –

Shinjiro looked down at his food.

When the bill came, Arisato payed and refused to split.

The experience apparently wasn’t much of a deterrent. A couple days later, Arisato was standing in front of Shinjiro again, this time in Tartarus’ lobby while the team did their last minute stretches and checked their weapons. No one was paying attention to them as he held up a hand, another coupon pinched between two fingers. Two-for-one.

Shinjiro looked at his axe, twisting his wrist and grinding the blade back and forth against the floor.

“Where are you getting these?”

Arisato shrugged. “They were mailed out.”

“Yeah, but each address only gets one.”

Arisato shrugged again. Shinjiro squinted. From what he had seen so far, the way Arisato acted around everyone else, the guy was blunt and not afraid to speak his mind. But with Shinjiro, he kept dancing around the point.

“…Okay. Whatever.”

Again, it was awful. Quiet and awful.

None of this made sense. If he was just reaching out as a leader, then he could’ve stopped after the first coupon. If this was a friendship thing, then that didn’t make any sense either. The other members of the team, or that classmate he’d brought over to watch movies the other day, they were all a lot more outgoing and friendly.

The only thing that did make sense was pity. Shinjiro wasn’t an idiot; he knew the kind of impression he left. To most he was just a jerk and it was fine that way, but to kindhearted airheads who watched too much TV, he probably came off as some socially awkward loner that just needed someone to reach out. But things went so much deeper and this guy had no idea about anything at all.

If it was going to keep happening, if Arisato was going to keep giving him these coupons, then Shinjiro needed to put a stop to it. He didn’t need charity, he didn’t need pity. He wasn’t there to make friends.

When he lifted his head to say something, he found Arisato leaning back in his chair, arms crossed and a thoughtful look on his face. As soon as their eyes met, he turned his head.

“Do you like movies?”

“What?”

“There’s a movie coming out that I’ve been waiting for,” Arisato said, watching the other customers. “Do you wanna come with me? It premiers tomorrow. Kind of sudden, but…”

Shinjiro didn’t say anything for so long that Arisato had to look again, but again ended up averting his eyes with a face like he was tasting something bitter. It was subtle, but enough that even Shinjiro noticed. Like he was forcing himself to do this. Pity was bad enough on its own, nevermind if he physically had to drag it out of himself.

Shinjiro opened his mouth to say something, but the look on his face must’ve done all the talking, because Arisato started shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop.”

“Stop what?

Arisato shrugged and tightened his arms around himself. “Bugging you. Sorry.”

“You’re not bugging me, it’s just… you’ve got other friends, right? Why not take one of them? It’s not like I’m the best conversation partner.”

“I don’t like talking that much.”

Shinjiro rubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. I’ve noticed.”

Arisato let out a soft, gentle noise. Laughter – or at least halfway there. Shinjiro peeked out from underneath his fingers to see a small smile. For some reason, it made him remember when Arisato tried tucking his hair, only to make his ear stick out. The two weren’t even related. He pushed both out of his head.

“Sorry if I was being forceful.” Arisato fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve and cast nervous eyes all around Hagakure. “I’m not really used to this.”

“Used to what? You’ve got lots of friends. Mitsuru was saying something about how impressed she is that you’ve ‘acclimatised’ lately – not that we were talking behind your back or anything. Uh… it just came up when she was telling me about the team.”

“Well… friends, yeah.” Arisato scratched his nose and went back to twisting his sleeve, stretching it with such force it would probably never go back to normal. “Either way, I ran out of coupons; I won’t bug you anymore.”

“You’re not – look, if you wanted to hang out, you didn’t need coupons or anything. Just be straight up with me.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I was just… nervous, I guess.”

“Am I that scary?”

“No,” Arisato mumbled, smiling slightly again, “you’re… you’re nice.”

“Y- uh, yeah, well…”

The rest of the meal went much easier. With all their cards on the table, the silences weren’t unbearable and there was even a little bit of conversation. Arisato spoke his mind honestly when he did actually speak. The subject of movies came up again and from there, music, which seemed to catch his attention as much as anything, and he easily started carrying the conversation while Shinjiro just listened and watched.

As they got to their feet, Arisato pulled out the money for his bowl – refusing the offer to split it – and continued telling Shinjiro about a band he would probably like. They headed for the door, Arisato chattering almost happily about some genre that sounded made up, just as someone else walked in. He came to an abrupt halt.

“Kenji,” he said uncertainly, “hey.”

“Hey, man.”

It took Shinjiro a moment to recognize the guy as the same one Arisato had once brought to the dorm to hang out. He hovered awkwardly for a moment, wondering if that was his cue to leave the two to talk. Arisato wasn’t giving him any clues; he just stood with his hands in his pockets, eyes on the floor.

The Kenji guy was glancing between the two of them, a thoughtful frown on his face. When he spoke, it was careful and measured.

“What’re you up to?”

“Eating,” Arisato said quietly. All the confidence and ease he’d started speaking with were gone in an instant.

Kenji squinted at Shinjiro. “Is this what you wanted all those coupons for? Are you -?”

“Don’t –”

“Wait.” Shinjiro took half a step forward. “What?”

“Few days back, this guy kept going around school, asking people for those coupons Hagakure mailed out.” Arisato was curling in on himself but Kenji didn’t seem to notice, he just kept talking. “He was paying people for them. Wouldn’t tell us why, but…”

Arisato turned his head until they couldn’t see his face. Kenji fiddled with the zipper on his jacket. It finally seemed to hit him that he wasn’t reading the atmosphere too well.

“But, uh, well… uh, I’m pretty hungry. I’ll see you at school, yeah?”

Kenji waited for a reply but when none came, he shrugged and stepped around them. There was a moment of silence before Arisato started walking. Shinjiro jogged half a step to keep up, coughing quietly into his fist, not really knowing what to say.

They were on the street and a block over when Arisato mumbled, “Sorry.”

Inside his pockets, Shinjiro’s hands were cold and clammy. There was still plenty of time until midnight, but it was still late and plenty of people milled about on the street. Cars passed by, louder than the faint music they could hear from a few clubs they passed. Voices saying really nothing at all floated around them.

“You were really paying people for those coupons?”

Arisato shot him a dirty look and walked faster. Shinjiro couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Hey –” Shinjiro reached for his arm, forcing him to stop and look at him. Arisato pursed his lips, eyes darting around, a whole lot of anger and fear bundled up tight in a tiny package. “Look. Listen, it’s… whatever this is about, it’s a bad idea to get involved with me, so we can just forget about it. This whole thing has been a disaster.”

Arisato wrung his hands.

“It’s no big deal,” Shinjiro pushed, “it’ll be easy. I’ll keep following your orders, no problem, but we don’t gotta do this. Alright?”

“I want to.”

Slowly, eventually, Arisato looked at Shinjiro – not in the eye, he was staring intently at the buttons on Shinjiro’s jacket – but he was at least looking.

“I wanna get to know you, that’s why I was…” Still he kept twisting his hands together. No eye contact and soft voice, he said, “I’m sorry for bothering you.”

“You weren’t –”

“No, I was being weird about it, I know, I just… really wanted to.” Scratching his nose, Arisato tilted his head forward until his bangs hid what his hand didn’t. “Um… lately, the whole time I’ve been fighting with SEES, I’ve… been hanging out with a lot of people and I never used to before and… it’s been… nice. And I thought that maybe you… ever since we met at the station and you saved us, I’ve been interested in you and –”

A pause filled with the din of the city followed his words. Unable to look at him, Shinjiro stared at the ground and, like some giddy schoolgirl, his cheeks started to heat up. Arisato shook his head.

“Not – not like that. Not really. I mean, I thought we were similar and I wanted to get to know – uh… nev-nevermind. Sorry.”

“Don’t – you don’t have to apologize,” Shinjiro muttered. “I should, I was being –”

“No, it’s –”

Arisato sighed and let out a shaky little laugh. Shinjiro watched him cup a hand in front of his mouth, the smile spreading to his eyes, and he tried biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from doing the same. The smile won out. It was barely a fight.

“This really has been a disaster,” Arisato said.

“It – it wasn’t all bad. Once you stopped being weird and actually talked to me.”

Arisato smiled and scuffed his toe against the ground. “Then… then how about that movie? Is that okay?”

There it was, his chance to back out. But Shinjiro’s head was full of Arisato’s rare laugh and his ear sticking out, his awkwardness and sincerity. Arisato had no idea about anything, not the pills or Ken, but it all swirled around until Shinjiro found himself nodding, getting another smile in return, and he smiled back like the happy idiot he was.


End file.
